Sacrifice of the Sisters Lot

By Chris Kuriata

In 1988, 12-year-old Emery is looking forward to spending the summer cooling off in the sprinkler, escaping the boredom of church, and begging her parents for a kitten. Instead, she discovers a powerful entity lurking within the walls of the family’s home. The eerie vibrations in the wall grant Emery and her three sisters whatever they desire; from fresh lipstick and new boyfriends, to revenge against a local predator. All the while, her parents impose an increasingly bizarre set of rules and rituals intended to keep the sisters safe. After the disappearance of their parents, the sisters‘s uncle, a disgraced TV faith healer, and domineering grandmother move in, forcing the girls to create “real miracles," unaware of the apocalyptic threat posed to the entire town. An exploration of the powerful bonds of sisterhood, The Sacrifice of the Sisters Lot is a riveting tale of love, betrayal and sacrifice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palimpsest Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781990293573

Chris Kuriata

Chris Kuriata lives in and writes about the Niagara Region. He's published horror and dark fantasy stories in magazines in Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan. Before turning his attention to fiction, he wrote and edited documentary series about true crime, tent revivals, and hockey.

Book preview

One

The sidewalk burned brimstone-hot on the soles of my feet. I’d idiotically kicked off my flip-flops to run faster, not realizing the streets were paved with hot coals. The heat of the noon sun scattered my family. Cold weather draws everyone closer—sharing a fire, sharing body heat. Hot weather does the opposite. You want to be alone, and if you find a cool spot, the last thing you want is to get crowded.

My older sister shielded her eyes with cucumber slices when she sunbathed in the backyard. She’d learned this trick from pictures in her favourite magazines, the ones piled under her bed, their perfume inserts stinking up the whole room. Her skin glistened with oil and perspiration. The dedicated hours she’d endured beneath the sun concerned me. I couldn’t help but imagine biting her leg and having a whole sheet of her skin tear off, like a piece of fried chicken.

I came bearing news I expected would make her jump up and hug me.

Free kittens!

Where?

Mr. Bruinanski’s garage sale.

She didn’t even lift a cucumber slice to look me in the eye.

Oh. Good luck with that.

My sisters and I had lived our entire lives without a pet. Going to school taught us this was not normal. Every classmate had a dog or a cat; sometimes both. Even kids from broken homes who lived in grimy downtown apartments took care of gerbils or parakeets. The more adventurous kept lizards or hermit crabs. Meanwhile, Mom wouldn’t so much as let us set out a lousy bowl of milk for strays. She thought pets were for pirates and blind people.

Pets are exhausting, Mom said. You take them to the vets, you keep them fed... Who’s going to look after them when you’re at school all day? You think a dog wants to sit around the house sad and lonely?

She overexaggerated. Animals spent most of their time sleeping. The ones who didn’t were happy to have the TV left on to keep them company. It sure beat rotting away at the pet shop, where shitty boys disturbed your nap by rapping quarters against the glass and if the building ever caught fire, you’d be roasted alive, helpless.

Pets die, Mom said. If they don’t get hit in the road, they get old and sick. Who needs that sadness?

And this was Mom’s true objection to pets. Not the mess or the expense, but the fear of unnecessary sadness.

In the garden, my older sister didn’t notice the plump ant crawling up her cheek, perhaps mistaking the tickle of its feet for a drop of sweat. I saved her by flicking the ant away before it reached the cucumber over her eyes. We’re getting a kitten—I promised her—I have a plan.

---

Mom was bunkered down inside, hunched over a fan in the kitchen. She listened to the weather report on the radio, hoping for a cold front to come in and slay this heat wave, just long enough for her and Dad to get a night’s rest. She longed for one of those mythical June snowstorms Grandma claimed came all the time in her youth.

Guess what I saw at Mr. Bruinanski’s garage sale?

Mom wore a bag of frozen peas on the back of her neck. The plastic sagged, the insides gone mushy. She flung the defrosted vegetables into the sink where they’d sit for days, until they became smelly enough for the trash. Mom never turned the stove on in this temperature. We ate peanut butter for dinner or we went hungry.

He’s got ice cube trays.

I knew Mom longed for more ice cube trays. She envisioned a fleet of them stacked in the freezer, making enough ice to fill the sink for her to dunk her head. Homemade arctic water would cool her off in a big hurry, cool her off so fast she might even pass out. She found the thought delicious, so she grabbed her purse and followed me out the door.

I led the way with my hands above my head, to shield my eyes from the blazing sun. Hurry! Someone else might buy them if we don’t get there in time.

Mom suspected she’d been set up the moment she stepped into the cool dankness of Mr. Bruinanski’s garage. The concrete floor smelled of oil and water from his boat, on which he often promised to take us out to the lake but never followed through. Mom pulled the neck of her damp shirt over her mouth to filter the offensive odour. Tufts of cat hair floated past her face, and she swatted the soft fluff away as though they were disease-filled mosquitoes.

My younger sisters, the twins, sat where I’d placed them, next to a collection of push mowers. The girls crouched on their knees, peering into a cardboard box filled with fresh, mewling kittens. My younger sisters giggled as the kittens crawled up their arms. The baby claws weren’t sharp enough to puncture their skin. The twins chattered away in the low voices they used when they wanted to shut out the rest of the world. I cleared my throat and the twins looked up, pretending to be surprised to see Mom in Mr. Bruinanski’s garage. Why, fancy meeting you here.

Mom swatted the back of my head. I’d dragged her away from her comfortable kitchen for dumb kittens?

You girls. Always scheming something.

We wanted one of those kittens desperately. That they were free seemed to clear the only logistical roadblock to bringing one home. If a kitten cost hundreds of dollars, sure, we may have pouted and offered to forgo this year’s birthday and Christmas gifts, but we’d have accepted Mom’s excuse they were too expensive. But free? How often does one luck into a deal of this magnitude? Hell, we should take them all!

Mom plucked a fresh cigarette from the pack beneath the shoulder of her shirt. The corners of her mouth lifted into a sarcastic you’ll-have-to-do-better-than-that smirk. Unlike Dad, who got carried away, Mom prided herself on her ability to say No and mean it.

On cue, Mr. Bruinanski waddled over to our begging circle and delivered the lines I’d suggested to him earlier.

Shame I can’t keep the little things much longer.

The twins and I whipped around to face Mr. Bruinanski. Whatever did he mean?

Tonight it’s off to the vets for a sniff of gas. I’ve already got another cat about to drop a litter. It’s too much.

Ignoring Mr. Bruinanski’s irresponsibility for failing to get his cats spayed (didn’t he listen to Bob Barker?), the twins and I grabbed Mom’s arms, scratching her worse than any cat.

Mom, you can’t let that happen!

Poor little things!

We have to save at least one!

The twins wrapped their arms around one another. Tears dripped from their cheeks to the oily garage floor. Mr. Bruinanski had sentenced our new playmates to a cruel, frightening execution. That’s the power of kittens. Not even ours, and already they were creating unnecessary sadness.

Mom lost all patience. She made sure to blow her cigarette smoke away from the kittens, exhaling right into my face—punishment for upsetting the twins.

The crying you girls are doing now is nothing compared to the crying a kitten will make you do one day. You should be grateful to go home empty-handed.

Of all Mom’s strengths, an optimistic outlook was not one of them.

She tossed her cigarette to the floor, not even bothering to stamp it out. She hoped the next time Mr. Bruinanski took his stinking boat onto the lake he crashed into a reef and got stuck for a few days to think about what he’d done. Denied her ice cube trays, she walked home alone. She specifically said, Don’t follow me.

The twins and I returned to the litter of kittens to say goodbye. We hung our arms into the box. Their fur tickled our arms and their teeth nipped at our skin, but we didn’t giggle or smile. I hope we didn’t get the kittens’ hope up too much.

---

A surprise visit from Grandma always brought joy.

I opened the front door, having no idea she’d be standing on the other side, smiling broadly, unashamed of her rotten teeth, holding both hands behind her back. My sisters all gathered in the hall, and together we whooped and danced, celebrating Grandma’s arrival. She basked in our admiration.

I heard some lonely girls live here who need someone to hug.

From behind her back, Grandma produced a beautiful kitten, its four paws waving in the air like octopus tentacles, eager to be placed on the floor. The kitten’s green eyes and shimmering blue fur took our breath away. She looked precious. Worth abandoning the ones in Mr. Bruinanski’s garage for.

Mom fumed at the sight of the new kitten, already brushing itself along the hallway baseboards, leaving behind fur. Uninvited guest brings unwanted companion, she announced like an anchorman reading the headline. Grandma laughed. Mom hadn’t been joking. She was dead serious.

Please take your shoes off when you’re coming into my house.

Why? Don’t you vacuum? Don’t you wash the floors?

Later, I overheard Mom telling Dad, If I’d known she was coming, I would have waxed all the floors and watched her slip and fall on her rump.

During dinner, Grandma told us the kitten already had a special name. She made us guess and, in between bites of our Kentucky Fried Chicken, we interrupted the grown-up’s conversation with names that increasingly became shots in the dark.

Sadie!

Princess Leia!

Thunder Paws!

Featherhead!

For Christ’s sake! Mom snapped, turning her knife on Grandma. Either tell the kids the damn name or I’ll pick a new one.

But Grandma refused to say. Imitating the voice on late-night radio, she preferred to keep us all in…Suspense!

While we ate, New Kitten settled in by exploring the wide-open frontier of our house. Her tiny paws echoed over the hardwood floor as she scampered back and forth, waiting for us to guess her secret name. My sisters and I abandoned our ice cream to resume playing with her. We followed the sound of her pattering feet into the front hallway, so we could scoop her up and smother her with our affection, but when we arrived, New Kitten was nowhere to be seen.

Where is she?

Thinking she must have tuckered herself out, we went on the hunt, expecting to find her sleeping under the couch or curled up in one of Dad’s smelly old work boots. Soon, we were peeking under chairs, lifting sofa cushions, and calling Kitty, kitty, kitty! and cursing ourselves for not being clever enough to guess the secret name Grandma withheld from us.

Our hysteria amused the grown-ups. Dad popped the tab on his beer can and hollered helpful advice.

Better check under the sink in the kitchen. Make sure she’s not drinking bleach!

The four of us scrambled to the kitchen, threw open the cupboard doors, but found only water pipes and bottles of cleanser.

Oh my God! Check the bathroom. She might be drowning in the toilet! Dad cackled.

An hour later, Mom’s annoyance turned to concern. She’d been counting on Grandma taking the cat away with her. She didn’t care that we’d hate her for sending our cat away. Didn’t care that for the next two days all of her daughters would be sullen, thinking, Oh, we have the meanest mother in the world. She ruins everything good in our life.

By nightfall, Mom grew frantic, shaking down each of our house’s many nooks and crannies looking for New Kitten. She threw open closet doors, and made Dad pull the TV cabinet away from the wall, but all they found were stray cigarette butts and dead bugs. She continued to look even as Grandma stood in the door making her goodbyes.

There’s no reason to worry—she found a comfy spot to rest in private. Open a can of tuna and watch her come flying if you don’t believe me.

At bedtime, Mom called off our search. We could resume in the morning. Without much enthusiasm, she asked if we knew how long cats lived.

I’ll still be looking after this cat when the last of you leaves home for college, she muttered.

Surprisingly, not even my older sister demanded the right to stay up until New Kitten resurfaced safe and sound. We dutifully marched upstairs and began our bedtime ritual. We brushed our teeth and changed into pyjamas without a word. Already, our hope of finding New Kitten was dashed.

Mom’s estimation of the feline lifespan was tragically inaccurate. For starters, none of her daughters have left home, despite us being well past college age. Each of us smelled trouble in the air. We intuitively understood New Kitten was not coming back.

---

Of all the ways to be awakened—loud noises, heavy shaking, splashed with water—the worse by far is having your hair pulled.

Two hands tugged my pigtails, nearly dragging me out of bed by my scalp.

Leave me alone.

The twins often visited in the night, demanding I fix small problems such as a burnt-out night light or empty water glass, things they could either do themselves or that could wait until morning. They never pestered our older sister the same way. She’d laid down the law, making her bedroom off-limits, and the twins respected that.

They tugged my hands, leading me down the hall to their room. The captain’s bed they shared stood pushed away from the wall, revealing a rectangle of wallpaper still vibrant and clean from having been covered up for so long.

The twins knelt and pressed their ears flat against the wallpaper. I yawned and tugged the hem of my night shirt closer to my knees. The twins put fingers to their lips and shushed me.

Listen.

Skeptical of this game, I placed my ear to the wall, half expecting to find something sticky smeared there as a practical joke. From the other side, I heard movement. Scratches and bumps. Something tiny squeezed between the rivets and clawed through puffs of insulation. New Kitten! I tapped the wall, and she purred loudly in response. Unbelievable. All was not lost.

Everyone! Wake up! Come quick!

The whole family gathered in the twin’s bedroom; my older sister in her long silk nightie, Mom in her black kimono, and Dad bare-chested, showing off the first threads of grey in the black swirl between his breasts. My sisters and I crowded around the purring wall, jostling like piglets for their turn at a nipple.

We spoke soothing words to New Kitten.

We’re here.

We’ll save you.

I strummed my fingers along the wallpaper, imagining I stroked her furry, whiskered chin. Mom and Dad ought to be ecstatic. New Kitten was saved; we were delivered from unnecessary sadness. I waved my hand, inviting them closer to the wall to share this happy moment.

Mom and Dad did not celebrate. They looked worried. They traded whispers.

What are you waiting for? I asked Dad. Get her out of there!

Dad hesitated, which surprised me. He loved home repairs. The sound of his drills and saws sometimes beat the first chirps of the morning birds. I thought he’d be running to the basement to fetch his hammer to punch open the wall. New projects excited him. The destructive parts were his favourite. Knocking down walls and tearing out kitchen counters interested him more than the process of building them back up. Here was the perfect opportunity to grab his sledgehammer, yet he stood down.

Cats have phenomenal memories, Dad said. Some cats you can drive fifty miles into the country, toss out the window, and they still find their damn way home. If the cat got in the wall, she’ll get out.

Back in bed, I hoped New Kitten wasn’t frightened being trapped in the wall. Maybe Dad was right about her finding her own way out once she got bored. She was still under our roof, it wasn’t as though she’d been buried alive, or trapped at sea on a sinking ship.

Mom and Dad’s voices chattered in the living room below. Smoke from a dozen cigarettes chugged up the stairs, accompanied by snatches of worried conversation.

I’m writing Linda tomorrow and telling her this is it—Mother is not welcome in this house ever again.

Your mother meant well…

No. Horseshit. As soon as my back is turned, she’s upstairs snooping through the girls’ rooms looking for you-know-what.

We’ve kept it under control this long. We’ve got things organized.

It’s not even her I’m worried about, but Todd.

Dad’s voice turned serious.

Yeah, for God’s sake, don’t breathe a word of this to your brother.

---

As usual, the twins awoke first. Before getting dressed, the two of them were back at the same spot near the wall where we’d last heard New Kitten. They wished her a good morning and asked if she’d had pleasant dreams. No scratching noises came from behind the wall. The twins pounded the surface, telling her to wake up, it was time to rise and shine, but they got no response. She’d moved on to another part of the house.

Helping them search, I went room to room listening to the walls, but heard no movement either. No more scuffling in the hollows. In my room, I patted the wall and spoke in a gentle voice, hoping to call her close.

Mom grabbed my hand and jerked it away. I hadn’t even heard her come upstairs.

Stop touching the walls.

I lifted my palms, showing her that they were all clean. I’d washed thoroughly. My hands wouldn’t mark up the wallpaper.

Leave the cat be. She’s probably resting. Cats are nocturnal. All her exploring last night tuckered her out.

But it’s dark inside the walls. How does she know if it’s day or night?

Animals have their own internal clocks. When I was a young girl on the farm, your grandmother had a rooster who liked to bully other animals. When the chickens got sick of his bullshit they ganged up and pecked out his eyes. But even blind, he knew how to crow each morning at the crack of dawn, never a minute late.

School lasted an excruciatingly long time. Concentration was impossible. The teacher wrote math questions on the board, but all I thought about was New Kitten trapped behind the wall. Was she lonely? Was she hungry? When the final bell rang, I collected the twins and hurried them across the busy roads without waiting for the crossing guard. They were as eager as I was to check on our missing baby.

Positive thoughts are important. I told the twins when we got home we’d find New Kitten waiting for us, grooming the wall dust from her coat. She’d purr, and we’d pet her together, until her secret name became obvious.

We came in the front door and found Mom and Dad waiting for us with solemn faces. Our older sister sat on the living room couch, arms crossed sulkily over her chest. She got caught sneaking out of her last period at high school to come search for New Kitten. She’d been crying. She already knew.

I took a deep breath, bracing for the worst. The twins grabbed my hands.

I’m sorry girls. New Kitten’s not here anymore. She left.

How to do you know? My voice cracked.

Dad bent down and hugged the three of us. The twins crawled into his arms, but I squirmed away. I didn’t accept what he was telling us yet.

I checked every opening, honey. The cat’s not in the walls.

She must have crawled out in the middle of the night, Mom said. "Filled her belly with scraps from the sink and headed after Grandma. You remember what your father said about cat’s homing sense. Just you wait. In a week or two my mother will open her front door and find New Kitten sitting on her doorstep, swishing her tail and asking, What’s for supper, boss?"

That night, I dreamed of New Kitten’s trip to Grandma’s house out in the country. She caught rides along the highway with lonely truck drivers, making new friends, and sleeping on their warm dashboards. Charmed truck stop waitresses fed her bowls of milk and old hamburger ends.

Mom and Dad are lying.

My older sister bent over my bed, her lips tracing the outline of my ear as she whispered. Ignoring her, I rolled over, but she wouldn’t allow me to go back to sleep.

Mom and Dad would rather tell us a made-up story, because it’s easier to believe than the truth.

She linked her arm with mine and pulled me out of bed. We crept down the dark hallway into her room. I took her seriously now that she’d brought me into her inner sanctum. My older sister guarded her privacy ferociously. She constantly asked Mom and Dad for a lock for her door, even though she didn’t have anything the twins or I were interested in stealing. Mom always refused. Family didn’t lock one another out.

Inside, her reading lamp cast a spotlight onto the wall beside her headboard. I put my hand in the light. The wallpaper felt warm, almost melted. As soon as my fingers made contact, fresh purring came from the other side of the wall. Life remained in there yet.

My older sister looked proud. See, who’s the one who’s got us a kitten now?

I shouted with joy, prompting my older sister to clamp her hand over my mouth.

Are you crazy? Do you want to wake everyone up?

I felt ashamed. She trusted me enough to share her discovery, treating me like an equal, and I nearly blew it by alerting Mom and Dad.

Mom and Dad are no help, my older sister said. They don’t care if she dies in there. We’ll have to get her out ourselves.

I tapped the wall, and New Kitten tapped back. Her little paws were inches from my fingers, separated only by wooden planks and plaster. I’m still here, she told us. I sang softly and stroked the wall, asking New Kitten to be brave. We would come for her. The wall vibrated against my hand, a steady pulsing as New Kitten purred.

Maybe she found bugs or a mouse to keep her alive, my older sister said. But she must be nearly starved to death by now.

The thought frightened me. Very soon, New Kitten would be a curled mound of bones for a work crew to find. Work crews found secrets in the wall all the time. I once overheard Dad telling Mom about finding a cloth sack inside the wall of a house he’d been repairing. Wrapped in the sack was a mummified baby, as much as fifty years old. I thought about that baby for a long time. Was she put in the wall out of shame, having been born to a young girl whose family name couldn’t suffer her existence? I wondered if she’d been born dead, or if someone stitched her into that cloth casket while she was still breathing. I made the mistake of asking Dad, and he roared like I’d pressed my finger into a gaping wound, telling me he didn’t want to hear about it.

This is awful, I said.

No, dummy, this is our big chance to lure her out of the wall.

---

After carefully reconnoitring the house, my older sister felt certain she knew where New Kitten slipped into the walls.

Beneath the dishwasher.

Last year, Dad had cut open the kitchen floor to reroute water pipes from the basement to Mom’s new dishwasher. With the heavy appliance (which Dad had bought from a mysterious truck parked down by the canal) in place, he saw no sense in sealing the floor back up. For fun, my sisters and I took turns shooting marbles underneath the dishwasher, listening to them ping against the pipes as they tumbled through the hole into the basement. We played in shifts, one of us waiting down below in the basement to catch the marbles as they fell out of the ceiling.

The longer we played, the less marbles came back. Mom and Dad were furious. Our marbles might have ruined the pipes, cracking them open and flooding the house. We were forbidden from messing around beneath the dishwasher ever again.

Mom went outside to water the garden, and my older sister and I took the opportunity to invade the empty kitchen. I grabbed a can of tuna from the cupboard and ran it beneath the electric can opener. The gears spun, peeling the lid off and perfuming the air with a fishy aroma. My older sister flapped her skirt to fan the smell. We peered into the darkness beneath the dishwasher but heard no sign of New Kitten.

Huh, my older sister said. She’d honestly believed this would work. Open another can.

I followed her instructions, though it occurred to me New Kitten wouldn’t know what the sound of a can opener meant. We never had a chance to feed her from one.

She’s too far away to smell anything, my older sister said.

I grabbed a wad of wet tuna and stuffed it beneath the dishwasher, putting the food right at the edge of the hole leading into the basement. Air blew onto my fingers, the draft chilled, as though the hole ran all the way to the arctic.

Put more. If the scent is strong, she’ll come.

My older sister ran the can opener, feeding me a steady supply of tuna fish to pack beneath the dishwasher. A bounty of manna piled high and deep, calling for New Kitten to crawl into the light and relieve her hunger.

New Kitten didn’t take the bait. She stayed hidden, sleeping.

We tossed the cans in the garbage, burying them deep so Mom wouldn’t find them and punish us for making such a waste of good food.

---

Angry curses erupted from the kitchen. Mom shrieked like she’d suffered a bad burn or chopped off a finger. I sat in front of a whirling fan in the living room, speaking into the churning blades to hear my voice echo like a robot. I hoped Mom’s accident was a burn instead of blood.

My older sister and I found the kitchen in utter pandemonium. New Kitten may have ignored our tuna offering but the mice hadn’t. They swarmed from the hole to gobble the tuna. Unaware of our rescue efforts, Mom had switched the dishwasher on and the rumble sent a flurry of frightened mice scrambling into the kitchen. My older sister and I watched as dozens of grey rodents surged from beneath the dishwasher, like water from a backed-up drain. They scrambled and bumped into one another, running across the floor in a blind panic.

Mom grabbed a broom and tried sweeping the mice back under, but more kept coming. They squeaked in unison, cursing her attempts to swat them away. Basement mice scurried everywhere; along the edge of the counter, into the sink, beneath the fridge.

She knew to blame us immediately.

What did you girls do?

My older sister felt too old to be intimidated by Mom, so she took a heroic pose, placing one hand on her hip. You told us to leave the walls alone. Well, we didn’t touch the walls. We touched the floor. So there! Her brashness impressed me. I’d never dare speak to Mom that way.

Our rodent troubles weren’t over yet. When the dishwasher’s cycle ended, Mom opened the door and found our clean plates and glasses surrounded by dead mice. Drowned in scalding water, their cooked bodies dangled from the plastic grate and clogged the cutlery basket, their tails intertwined through fork tines. Mom issued us yellow gloves and stood watching, chain-smoking while we plucked the corpses from the machine and rewashed every last plate and fork in bleach.

My older sister worked mute, seemingly traumatized. I, however, took the multitude of mice as a positive sign.

That’s why she didn’t come for the tuna, I whispered as